Transliteration:( Wa qaalal lazeena kafaroo lillazeena aamanoo law kaana khairam maa sabaqoonaaa ilyh; wa iz lam yahtadoo bihee fasa yaqooloona haazaaa ifkun qadeem )
And the infidels said about the believers: "If it had been good, they would not have reached to it ahead [30] of us." And since they have not been guided thereby, therefore they will say: "This is an old [31] fabrication".
The disbelievers mocked the early Muslims—many of whom were poor, weak, or from humble backgrounds—saying: “If this message were truly good, we would have embraced it before them.” Their arrogance and pride made them believe that truth must reach the elite first, not the socially lower class. Thus, they used the identity of the early believers as an excuse to reject the truth.
Because they failed to find guidance through the Qur’an due to their pride and prejudice, they dismissed it by calling it an old fable or fabrication. This was their way of undermining the message, labelling it outdated and irrelevant, even though it was the final and timeless revelation from Allah. Their rejection stemmed not from lack of clarity, but from a deliberate refusal to accept the truth.
The tafsir of Surah Ahqaf verse 11 by Ibn Kathir is unavailable here.
Please refer to Surah Ahqaf ayat 10 which provides the complete commentary from verse 10 through 14.
(46:11) The unbelievers say to the believers: If there was any good in this Book, others would not have beaten us to its acceptance.”[15] But since they have not been guided to it, they will certainly say: “This is an old fabrication.”[16]
15. This is one of those arguments that the chiefs of the Quraish employed to beguile and mislead the common people against the Prophet (peace be upon him). They said: If the Quran were really based on the truth and Muhammad (peace be upon him) were inviting towards a right thing, the chiefs and the elders and the noblemen of the community would have been in the forefront to accept it. How could it be that a few young boys and mean slaves only should accept a reasonable thing but the distinguished men of the nation, who are wise and experienced, and who have been held as reliable by others, would reject it? This was the deceptive reasoning by which they tried to make the common people believe that there was something wrong with the new message; that is why the elders of the people were not believing it. Therefore, they also should avoid it.
16. That is, they regard themselves as a criterion of the truth and falsehood. They think that whatever (guidance) they reject must be falsehood. But accepting them since thousands of years also were devoid of wisdom and knowledge, and the whole wisdom has now become these people’s monopoly.
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